The wide presence of the right to work in national and international legal texts contrasts with a lack of agreement about the concrete content of this right. According to the hegemonic interpretation, it consists of two elements: extension of wage labour and significant improvement of working conditions. However, if we study the history of right to work claims, especially from the French Revolution to 1848, we can notice that the meaning of this right was rather wider in the past. Rescuing (...) the historical significance of the right to work may help to face the problem of the future of work. In particular, and unlike what might seem at first sight, the claim that everyone should have his or her right to work guaranteed can be a way of articulating and concretizing issues such as workplace democracy, the organization of domestic work or the transition to a sustainable society. (shrink)

Meaningful work refers to the idea that human work is an integral part of the way we think of our lives as going well. The concept is prevalent in sociology and business studies. In philosophy, its discussion tends to revolve around matters of justice and whether the State should take steps to eradicate meaningless work. However, despite the breadth of the recent, general literature, there is little to no discussion about how it is in fact the case that work is (...) meaningful. There is a basic assumption that certain facts about work make it meaningful. After noting the shortcomings in the literature, this essay argues that we can better understand the production of meaning in work by an analogy to speech acts. Using Paul Ricoeur’s theory of action as discourse, one can see how meaning is predicated in the performance of work in ways that are locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. (shrink)

Many people lack autonomy because they work jobs that deny them significant and meaningful control over what they do. The negative impact of this can be ameliorated, to a degree, by the relationships that people often form with co-workers: that is, workplace sociability can itself enhance workers’ autonomy while also helping them tolerate heteronomous work by making it more bearable. In addition, workplace sociability is also a potential resource for advancing the cause of working people’s autonomy, acting as a basis (...) for developing forms of workplace solidarity which workers can then use, through strike action and other forms of militant activity, to improve their working conditions. In this paper, we identify the tension between, on the one hand, the ameliorative andtherapeuticvalue of workplace sociability and, on the other, sociability’s potentialinstrumentalrole in expanding workers’ autonomy. We argue that developing workplace sociability into more purposive forms of solidarity involves putting at risk those other functions performed by such sociability. If expanding their autonomy is something workers have reason to care about, navigating the varied and complex functions performed by workplace sociability is thus an important dimension of workplace organizing. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAxel Honneth’s theory of recognition has been criticised for presenting a deficient concept of work and the normative significance of work. In recent years Jean-Philippe Deranty, among others, has suggested that Honneth could overcome this deficiency by reintroducing into his mature theory the critical concept of work that first appeared in his 1977–1985 writings. My paper critically reconstructs and assesses Deranty’s position. I argue that Deranty has understated the extent to which his research direction diverges from Honneth’s. Rather than simply (...) nuancing Honneth’s existing philosophical system, Deranty’s work exposes some of its conceptual limits and points beyond it. (shrink)

Entry on Work in M. N. S. Sellars & S. Kirste (Eds.), The Springer Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer.